Barcelona 0-2 Villarreal: A sorry end to a sorry season

Perhaps there should be no surprise that it was a disappointing end to a bitterly disappointing season.

Barcelona went down at home against Villarreal, who earned their place in the UEFA Conference League, and that was that. 

There was some fight early on, with Ferran Torres, Adama Traore and Frenkie de Jong having chances or shots at goal, but not a lot of consistent quality.

And at the other end, Villarreal were lethal when they got their chances. Alfonso Pedraza fired the visitors ahead when he broke in down the left and in the second half, Moi Gomez took advantage of a bad Adama Traore pass across his own box to ram home the second. There wasn’t much more to it. 

Around 54,500 fans came to the game, despite the 10pm kick-off on a Sunday night, and they at least were in good voice. 

Xavi’s project lost momentum when they were knocked out of the Europa League by Eintracht Frankfurt and since then it has been a slow trudge to the end.

They wrapped up second place at Getafe last week and the hope was they could play without pressure against Villarreal, but once the visitors scored, Barcelona looked shackled.

The final stages became a procession of goodbyes, with Riqui Puig and Oscar Mingueza thrown on, Ousmane Dembele potentially too, while Luuk de Jong didn’t get to play but lapped up the fans love at full time as he waved them goodbye.

“Next season we have to change our mentality,” said Dani Alves. “We have to improve and come back with a new energy.” Let’s hope so.